South-West pensioners decry scrapping of PTAD

The Nigeria Union of Pensioners, South-West, has urged President Bola Tinubu not to scrap the Pension Transitional Arrangements Directorate.

The Pensioners said that scrapping PTAD will return them to what they described as “better forgotten dark days in Egypt where payment of their pensions and gratuities will be at the whims and caprices of larcenous civil servants”.

The spokesman for the union, Dr Olusegun Abatan, disclosed this on Thursday while briefing journalists after the zonal meeting of the pensioners held at the secretariat of the union in Leme, Abeokuta.

Abatan explained that the reported move to scrap PTAD, which had since given the pensioners a new lease of life, is being attributed to the recommendation of Orosanye’s report, whereas the pensioners said nothing of such is in the said Oronsaye’s report.

Highlighting the benefits of PTAD, Abatan said aside from the seamless payment of pensions and gratuities, it has also eliminated long queues of pensioners and even death during verification exercises, among other dehumanising treatments the pensioners were subjected to in the past.

The pensioners urged President Tinubu to avoid being ill-informed by some self-serving civil servants over the scrapping of PTAD, saying that if at all PTAD will be scrapped, it is a creation of law and must be repealed through the same process by the National Assembly.

Abatan said, “Section 49 states that PTAD will cease to exist after the death of the last pensioner. We still have over a hundred thousand living Pensioners. PTAD already has a supervising ministry, the Ministry of Finance, it is also being coordinated by PENCOM, so why do they want it scrapped if not for self-serving purposes by unconscionable civil servants?

“PTAD is the baby of the law birthed by the National Assembly on June 25, 2004. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should avoid being misinformed by rapacious civil servants.

“To scrap it must go back to the National Assembly, any step taken to unilaterally scrap the PTAD without the imprimatur of the National Assembly is a violation of the law of the land and to that effect null and void and of no effect.”

The union also expressed its displeasure that the federal government has refused to pay pensioners the N25,000 it promised them in the MOU signed with the labour union in October 2023 as part of moves to ease the pains of fuel subsidy removal.

As a way out of the food scarcity crisis, the pensioners suggested to the federal government to create Food Production Zones in each geopolitical zone of the country and embark on massive importations of agricultural machinery, equipment and agrochemicals while also opening up rural roads for agriculture, among others.